The Louisville Review is now an independent non-profit organization. Housed at Spalding University from 1998 to 2020, and founded in 1976 at the University of Louisville, The Louisville Review was first launched by University of Louisville faculty Editor Sena Jeter Naslund, and two undergraduate students, Bonnie Cherry and Tom Willett.
From its start in 1976, TLR also has fostered the development of new writers. A poem TLR published twenty years ago by Alberto Riós now appears in standard literature textbooks, and TLR published the work of Louise Erdrich while she was still a student at Johns Hopkins. We have published such well-known writers as Jhumpa Lahiri, Tony Hoagland, Stephen Dunn, Claudia Emerson, and NY Times bestselling fiction author Ursula Hegi.
Since receiving the top award of the Kentucky Arts Commission as the best literary magazine in the state with its very first issue, the goal of the magazine continues to be to import the best writing to local readers, to export the best local writers to a national readership, and to juxtapose the work of established writers with new writers. Each poem and story submitted to TLR is judged entirely on its own merit whether the author is already nationally known or previously unpublished.
In 1996, to celebrate twenty years of continuous magazine publication, Fleur-de-Lis Press was launched. To date, over twenty books have been published—including Journeyman by Rick Neumayer, Victorine by Drema Drudge, The Moon with the Sun in Her Eye by Nana Lampton, The Real, True Angel by Robin Lippincott, Laughing Sickness by Kathleen Driskell, It Was the Goodness of the Place by Lucinda Dixon Sullivan, Surgeon Stories by Dally Walker, The Triangle Pose by Mary Welp, and more. Though a small operation, our books have received endorsements by renowned authors such as Maura Stanton, Maxine Kumin, Billy Collins, Tim O’Brien, Mark Doty, Melissa Pritchard, Silas House, and Fred Chappell, and reviews of national significance in such places as the NY Times Book Review and Kirkus. The goal of Fleur-de-Lis is to publish first books by authors whose work has been previously published in The Louisville Review.
The Louisville Review Corporation is a member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.
